In many industries such as mining and oil sand, manipulation of erosive agents generates damages to manipulating devices such as piping, crusher and bucket of excavating machines. Erosive agents could be coke, coal, limestone, sand, kaolin and metal ores.
In order to increase the life of the manipulating devices, usual solutions consist of coating the surfaces exposed to the erosive agent with a resistant material. Many types of resistant material are used such as boron carbide, silicon carbide, tungsten carbide, nano-structured titanium, iron carbide, iron boride, ceramic particle, cemented metal carbide and several alloys. Many types of processes are used to coat the exposed surfaces as PTA (Plasma Transferred Arc), thermal spray, MIG welding process and sintering process. Excepted MIG welding, these processes are rather expensive to operate. Moreover the efficiencies of such produced overlays vary depending on parameters such as the type of erosive agent, the impact angle and the temperature.
There is therefore a need for improved resistant materials and for an easier process to overlay an exposed surface.